-- On Pern --
It is 8:28 PM where you are.
It is evening of the fourth day of the eighth month of the thirteenth turn of the 12th pass.
In Igen:
It is the thirty-fourth day of Summer and 99 degrees. The night is clear. Stars twinkle merrily.
In Southern:
It is the thirty-fourth day of Winter and 43 degrees. Throughout the night, the cold winter rain continues to fall steadily.
In Southern Mountains:
It is the thirty-fourth day of Winter and 5 degrees. It's cold and dark out.

Where

Weyrling Barracks

OOC Date

30 Mar 2018 07:00

Weyrling Barracks

A cluster of small buildings punches out from the Weyr's walls here, each building just spacious enough to admit a few growing weyrlings and little else. Each has its own sturdy little hide covering the entrance to provide a modicum of privacy to its occupants, and a large stone basin for meat or water stands ready nearby. The Weyrlingmaster's office sits to one side, the smallest building in the area often doubling as class space. Within that space, the pale salted walls are covered with various charts, maps, and informational diagrams. In the small yard surrounded by these buildings, tables and chairs stand ready to seat as few or as many weyrlings as needed. A small hearth is situated at the nearest wall, with a small assortment of pots and kettles available to heat food or boil water, whether for cleaning or for klah.

Ainslee has become accustomed to living with the sound of drums in her head.

Even when Keryth sleeps, such as now, his head resting on her knee, they're there: a faint beat at the very edges of her consciousness. Rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat. At first, it was maddening: a constant staccato marching to filter out, while trying to adjust to a whole new life, a whole new set of emotions, always, always there. Now, a mere month later, Ainslee isn't sure she could ever sleep without it.

Even the push and pull of her stitches as she mends a shirt - Weyrlinghood is not kind of one's garments - follow the beat of Keryth's drums. Her whole life, she is realizing, will now follow that beat, down a very different path than she ever imagined. Different than she had even been taught to imagine.

Women aren't suited to riding. Even as a Candidate, and meeting more riders than she'd ever associated with in the lower caverns, Ainslee still held stock in the notion that dragonriding was rough, reckless, and unfeminine. (Not that she advertised it at the time; that would just be bad manners.) Definitely not in her cards. Even her foster mother, when Ainslee showed her the white knot, had sniffed, shrugged, and told her she might as well do her duty, but when you're done there will be sheets to hem. And her father, he'd sent a note: I'll see you after, then.

Well, she showed them. She hadn't meant to, really, but she had.

Only… now she hasn't seen them. She ties her thread off, using her teeth to break it in the tradition of seamstresses everywhere. There's been no word from her foster mother, or her father. She's received notes from her half-brother Adain and her foster sister Lisla, but that's been the extent of it. And she's not sure how to feel because, at the end of the day, she's still not sure it's a great idea either. This riding, this flying off into danger for the love of Weyr and Pern. I'm a seamstress! she wants to shout, when fellow weyrlings excitedly turn over these new notions of fighting Thread, joining a Wing, and - Faranth save them all - mating flights. I can turn a damn good collar, but this is all crazy!

The young blue shifts, raising his head and pushing his muzzle into his lifemate's face, hot breath filling the space between them.

« What is it? Why are you unhappy? »

"Nothing, Keryth. It's fine," Ainslee places her hands on either side of his face, tracing his jaw and eye ridges. She takes a deep breath, slow and deliberate, and can feel him calming too, the bugle fading to be replaced by the soft notes of a flute.